The Demolishers

by Donald Hamilton

  I laughed. “You guessed it. First of all, tell us about the bombing that took place here. I gather it was in that other room down the hall beyond the bar and kitchen and rest rooms.”

  “That’s right. That was their formal dining room, at the other end of the building, open only for dinner. This end was more a casual saloon-type eating place serving lunch and drinks and dinner. While they’re rebuilding, they’re compromising: they keep this room casual during the day, but flossy it up for dinner as you see it now.”

  I said, “Blatant discrimination, I call it. Men have to wear coats but women don’t have to wear skirts. What we downtrodden males need is an Equal Rights Amendment.”

  Laurel laughed. “Anyway, it was an attractive young honeymoon couple. Obviously splurging happily before settling down to matrimony. The boy in ice cream pants and a blue blazer, the girl in a fluffy pink dress. All dolled up for a special dinner in a high-priced restaurant selected from the guidebook sticking out of his coat pocket. He was carrying a couple of packages from local stores that are open late. The cute little blonde thing was so proud of the rings on her left hand, even though the solitaire wasn’t going to make anybody wear dark glasses as protection from its blinding brilliance. The handsome, tanned young fellow was so proud of her. Champagne, of course. And more champagne. Dinner ordered at last. She had to go. He had to go. Nobody thought anything of it; champagne does that to you. It was a table for four. The packages were on one of the vacant chairs. Boom. Two dead, seven injured. Nobody knows whether they slipped out of the johns before the blast or waited for the smoke and confusion afterwards to make their getaway.”

  Sandra, who hadn’t been saying much, spoke up at last: “She must have a lot of nerve, to come back to Newport. A good many people must have seen her, in much better light than I had down in West Palm Beach; and she was wearing a wig then. Still, I managed to recognize her, although it took me a minute or two.”

  “Of course, our excitement was way back last spring,” Laurel pointed out. “People forget with time. She’s probably gambling on that, and on staying out of the places she’d been back then.”

  I said, “Those seven people who were hurt, did they get over it?”

  Laurel thought for a moment. “I’d say so. Of course there are a few scars. But no dreadful disfigurements, no crutches or wheelchairs or permanent hospital beds. Yes, I’d say they’re all pretty much back to normal by this time—with a few unpleasant memories, of course. But I haven’t heard of any of them requiring the services of a psychiatrist.”

  I said, “Okay, tell us about the dead ones.”

  “Pirate Williams took the worst of the blast. He was at his usual table by the window, the one he always got when he came in to celebrate one of his boat deals. Would you buy a secondhand boat from a man who called himself a pirate? People did, like they buy secondhand cars from men who call themselves Cheatin’ Charley or Sneaky Sam.”

  “Oooh, what you just said,” I said. “Don’t you know they aren’t secondhand cars anymore? They’re pre-owned cars. Like a silencer isn’t a silencer anymore; it’s a sound suppressor. As a journalist, you’d better keep up with the language, baby.”

  “I’m not a journalist, I’m a crummy reporter,” Laurel said. “Anyway, the Pirate was one of our local characters, always looking as if he’d just come ashore after a month on a trawler, complete with whiskers and sea boots. He’d put on an old tweed jacket to comply with the rules when he came in here; and he didn’t mind a bit when the tourists asked about the picturesque old seadog by the window. A phony in a way; but he was supposed to run a pretty good boat yard, and he was a hell of a seaman, and loved it. He’d take that old Hatteras of his out in any weather and laugh at the landlubbers who were scared of a lousy little force eight. He wasn’t what you’d call a sweet, warmhearted guy; but Newport misses him.”

  “And the other victim?”

  “Well, she’s missed, too. Again, not what you’d call a sweet, warmhearted person; but God she was beautiful. Linda Anson. The campus-queen type, if you know what I mean.” Laurel cleared her throat. “Talking about dreadful disfigurements, I didn’t like her, but you don’t want to think about anything like that happening to a girl as lovely as that. It’s probably just as well she only lasted a couple of days after they got her to the hospital; she wouldn’t have wanted to live like that. The Pirate didn’t last any time at all, of course; he was practically blown to pieces.”

  “Were they together?”

  Laurel laughed. “God, no, Linda wouldn’t have given old Williams the time of day. She liked them young and handsome and rich. Not that the Pirate was a pauper. That boat yard of his was apparently a growing concern, and he seemed to do all right chartering the Montauk Maid. At least that’s what most people thought, but there were some rumors…”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, if you’ve got something a little shady going for you, you’ve got two choices. You can either act so straight nobody’ll suspect you, or you can go around telling everybody what a terrible crook you are—figuring that they’ll think you’d never call attention to yourself like that if you were doing something really illegal. Some people thought the Pirate overdid his piratical act.”

  “What would he be covering up?”

  She said a bit impatiently, “Come on, Matt! An old master seaman with a legitimate place of business on the water and a moderately fast boat he takes out at all hours, not always with charter parties on board? What would he be doing out there, admiring the sunset over Rhode Island Sound?”

  “Did he ever have trouble with the Coast Guard? Or any of the land-based drug busters?”

  Laurel shook her head. “Not that I know of. They may have been keeping an eye on him as a possibility, it would be surprising if they weren’t; but it’s the IRS that’s been doing the digging since his death. They aren’t happy about his books. It seems that maybe the old guy didn’t make as much profit on his boat sales as he claimed, and that the boat yard actually ran at a loss; so where did the money actually come from?”

  “You’d say he was conducting a small-scale laundering operation on the proceeds from his smuggling?”

  “I didn’t say it. You did.” She laughed, and reached for her camera. “Anything else I can tell you?”

  “Relatives, friends, people I can talk with?”

  “Williams didn’t have any relatives that I know of. The boat yard closed down after he was killed. Nobody came forward to inherit it or run it, so if you want to talk with the handful of workmen he employed, you’ll have to track them down. Check the other boat yards and the marinas. The Pirate didn’t have any friends, to amount to anything.”

  “What about the girl?”

  “That’s different. Everybody loved her, now that she’s dead. As a matter of fact, quite a few of them loved her when she was alive. Miaow. But she did play the field, although don’t suggest that to her parents if you talk with them. They remember her as an immaculate angel, of course. The address is in the book, Walter Anson. As for the men in her life, if you need names, I can probably give you some if you call me at the paper tomorrow morning. The one she was with on the fatal night was a typical specimen, good old New England family, good old New England money, and handsome enough to make any girl’s heart go into sexy spasms. Jerome Elliot, of the Elliot Manufacturing Company Elliots. He’s in the book, too, I believe.”

  “Good enough.” I changed the subject. “After they blew up this place they sent notes to the local papers and TV stations to claim credit?”

  “That’s right. Another victory for the brave soldiers of the Caribbean Legion of Liberty in their heroic war against Yankee imperialism. Pasteups. The letters were cut from newspapers and stuck to cheap bond paper. Any good suspense-novel reader knows that can’t be traced, unlike typewriters and handwriting.”

  I nodded again. I’d already got all that from the material dug out for me by Dana Delgado and our research people. I didn’t really know what I w
as groping for. Laurel got to her feet, and hesitated.

  “Look,” she said, “look, when it’s a question of a girl with a face like Linda Anson’s, you shouldn’t ask a girl with a face like mine, because the answer you get is bound to be prejudiced. Actually, the girl had plenty of brains, and a wonderful personality when it was worth her while to turn it on… God, there I go again! Bitchy Bennington! Thanks for the drinks and the cooperation.”

  Watching her make her way out of the crowded dining room, Sandra chuckled. “Would you say the beautiful campus queen stole a man from the plain reporter lady at one time or another?”

  “Seems likely. What about some coffee?”

  “Why spoil this nice buzz I have? Matt.”

  “Yes, Sandy.”

  “So Daddy did two thirds of his job. Or your job,” she said a bit tartly. “You didn’t tell me about the two men being killed.”

  “We had a few cops in our hair, remember?”

  “That’s five down so far. Are you happy?”

  I said, “Cut it out, small fry. You worry about your conscience and I’ll worry about mine.”

  “The trouble is, there’s no evidence that you really have one.”

  When we returned to the hotel, there was a policeman stationed in the hall outside the wrecked room that had been Sandra’s; but I put more faith in the telltales I’d rigged, leaving. They told me nobody’d entered my room from the corridor—our room now. Inside, while I checked the connecting door, also unopened since we left, Sandra took her gun out of her purse, slipped out the clip, and jacked the slide back to eject the chambered cartridge. I’d had her ready the weapon when we left the Silver Conch, just in case. She fed the round into the top of the clip, rammed the clip home, and checked that the chamber was really empty before replacing the gun in her purse. Well, it was nice to meet a young lady who’d been brought up properly; instead of being taught just to swoon gracefully at the sight of a firearm.

  “Who gets the bathroom first?” she asked.

  “You do,” I said. “I’ve got a couple of calls to make.”

  Trask was still available. He’d already heard about the latest bomb atrocity. We decided that he’d better increase our cover, under the circumstances. He made the usual moaning noises about lack of manpower; but there never was a cover man yet who didn’t moan about lack of manpower. Then I got Louis on the line.

  “Take them out,” I said.

  “Galvez and Koenig? The boys will be happy to oblige, they’re getting tired of trailing them around.”

  “The boys tire easily, it’s only been a couple of days. But their ordeal is over. Hit both targets. We’ve had a little trouble here. To hell with playing cagy. We’ll let the opposition know this isn’t touch football; we tackle for keeps.”

  I put down the phone. Sandra came out of the bathroom wrapped in a thin blue silk dressing gown, and I went in. I took longer than she had since she’d already had her daily shower, earlier. When I came back into the room, she was sitting cross-legged on her bed watching TV. The room was full of rock-and-roll. I watched the gyrations on the screen until the piece ended, and she snapped the set off with the remote control that was bolted to the table between the two beds so nobody’d run off with it.

  I said, “It’s a funny thing. The TV characters who’re paid a few hundred bucks to tell you all about Perfecto-dent toothpaste or Sweetiepie candy bars, they speak so clearly you can’t miss a word; but the gents and ladies who make thousands, maybe millions, shouting songs into those mikes can’t enunciate for shucks. Can anybody understand those lyrics?”

  Sandra had shed her dressing gown. She was wearing blue cotton pajamas, rather crumpled. She looked about six years old, except for her eyes, which were adult and wise and knew exactly why I was prattling about TV performers.

  She didn’t answer my question. Instead she said calmly, “You don’t have to be afraid, Matt. If I were going to rape you, I’d be wearing my passionate silk nightie, the one I had on the night I came to your room and found that Lia had beat me to it. But your virtue is safe from me tonight. Sleep well.”

  Surprisingly enough, I did.

  17

  Awakening with daylight in the room, I lay for a while debating whether to rouse my roommate or let her sleep a little longer. She solved my problem by slipping quietly out of the other bed and tiptoeing into the bathroom, clearly doing her best not to disturb me. I heard the door close gently. The john flushed. A toothbrush went into action.

  It seemed like a good opportunity for me to get out of my pajamas and into a T-shirt, shorts, and pants. I mean, it wasn’t as if we’d spent the night in each other’s arms; and I didn’t want to embarrass her, or myself, with any suggestions of intimacy, like zipping up my trousers in front of her. I was sitting on the edge of my bed pulling on my socks when the telephone rang. I reached for it and put it to my ear.

  A low contralto voice I recognized said, “Delgado.”

  Sandra appeared in the opening to the dressing alcove. She was holding her blue silk robe more or less closed about her with one hand. The toothbrush was in the other. There was toothpaste on her lips.

  “Oh, you’re awake,” she said.

  “It’s for me.”

  “Okay, okay, I can take a hint,” Sandra said, and vanished.

  I spoke into the phone. “Helm.”

  “Communique from Louis: ‘Targets terminated. No repercussions.’”

  “Good for Louis. What else.”

  The Delgado said, “There’s an interesting development—a possible development—but I’d like to make my report in person, if you’re up and receiving visitors.”

  I remembered the cool, dark, hostile lady in Mac’s office, and decided not to give her the satisfaction of hearing me go into a surprised my-God-how-did-you-get-here routine.

  “Anytime,” I said. “I’ll have a pot of coffee sent up.”

  “I already have one, and some extra cups,” said our efficient computer lady. “I’ll bring the tray. I’m right down the hall from you.”

  Socks on, I stuck my feet into my shoes and crossed the room. I spoke to the closed bathroom door: “Visitor coming on business. Female.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  I considered putting on a shirt for the benefit of Miss Dana Delgado; but if she didn’t know what a man looked like in his undershirt, it was time she learned. I was a high-powered field operative. I didn’t have to dress up for the office help. I heard footsteps in the hall and went to the door and opened it in the way the manual prescribes for times of crisis; but it was the right lady and nobody was behind her holding a gun on her. I let her enter and checked the hall outside. It was empty except for a different policeman guarding the room next door. Nobody but a real cop could have achieved that look of limitless patience. I stuck the .38 Smith and Wesson into my waistband, took the coffee tray from the Delgado, and carried it to the cocktail table in the corner.

  “Have a chair. When did you get to Newport?”

  “Late last night. Very late last night. It wasn’t urgent enough to wake you for.”

  She was looking around the room with its unmade beds and noting, I hoped, that there were two of them. Not that my sex life, or Sandra’s, was any of her business. She was just as handsome as I remembered her, slender and moderately tall in wine-colored slacks, and a matching sweater with a turtleneck that made her look more sporty and less severely efficient than the mannish shirt and tie in which I’d last seen her. But she still wasn’t what you’d call the cuddly type. The dark hair was drawn smoothly back from her face, which was discreetly but carefully made up. Her well-groomed appearance reminded me that I wasn’t fully dressed and hadn’t shaved yet. The woman had given me an inferiority complex since the first day I’d met her, perhaps because computers are a closed book to me. I always feel that anybody who can talk to those machines can’t possibly talk to me, at least not in a language I can understand.

  “I don’t mean that it isn’t important,�
� she said, seating herself and reaching for the insulated coffee jug on the tray. “If it develops the way I hope, it could be very important. But it may be a few days before I can confirm… Cream or sugar?”

  “Black, thanks.”

  “What about Mrs. Helm?” She glanced towards the bathroom.

  I called, “Sandy, do you want some coffee?”

  After a moment, Sandra appeared in her dressing gown but this time, I noted, there were no pajamas underneath. She made it easy to note. So much for embarrassing suggestions of intimacy. She gave me a sweet smile.

  “Did you call me, dear?” she asked.

  “Miss Delgado, Mrs. Helm, and vice versa,” I said. “Dana, Sandra, and vice versa. Do you want some coffee, Sandy?”

  Sandra nodded. “Yes, darling, I’ll drink it in there and finish dressing while you two transact your secret business… Black, please. Thank you so much, Miss Delgado.”

  We watched her go holding the cup, the unrestrained robe fluttering around her.

  “An attractive child, even with her hair like that,” Dana Delgado said.

  “Cut it out, Computer Lady,” I said. “Patronizing her will get you nowhere; and I’m a little tired of this female infighting. Last night I had to listen to a presumably intelligent woman reporter making snide remarks about a dead beauty who’d offended her in some way. This morning I have a normally sensible young lady playing femme fatale in a peekaboo dressing gown just because you’ve turned up. Now you’re making with the catty comments. Ugh!”